Having looked last week at quilts, it seems only logical to take a look at samplers this week. Google Art Project has a total of 230 examples of this quintessentially female art form. The great majority of those come from the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum.
Quilts have been recognized as a long under-appreciated women's art form. I was therefore excited to find that the Internatiional Quilt Museum has 96 entries at the Google Art Project site. To me it's very moving to see all this painstaking, attractive work done by women in bygone decades.
It's not exactly beautiful but it seems to me quite lovely: George Washington's Cherry Tree Quilt, made by an unknown woman (I expect), before 1852. The border is especially attractive.
Feast your eyes on a close-up of the gown in this portrait of Eleanora of Toledo, 1543, by Agnolo Bronzino.
There's another, slightly later portrait by the same artist -- with equally delectable close-ups -- titled Eleanora of Toledo and Son at the Detroit Museum of the Arts, c. 1550.
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